Dead Centre Read Free Page A

over sixty thousand referrals to MONGO websites, all brand new. Some of them, of course, were scams for cash.
    Individual aid work was trendy in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia. And in the US, the tax authorities were granting exemption to an average of eighty-three new charities a day. More than 150,000 had been registered so far – and these were just the lads who’d bothered to go through the system. The only reason I knew all this was because Mong, BB and I had gone that route.
    Aid 4 Tsunami. That was us. We carried accreditation to prove it; we’d printed it ourselves. It wasn’t the most original name for a charity, but it would do. There were far worse out here. And it was as well funded as any other MONGO.

7
    OUR STRETCH OF tent city was heaving with Western MONGO medics who’d dropped everything to come and help – which mostly meant setting off alone in hired wagons with a first-aid kit on the passenger seat. Some of the local lads had been examined three or four times each, and didn’t have a clue what the doctors told them, what drugs they’d been given, when and why they should take them.
    The docs ran around in full George Clooney mode, getting it all on video so their sponsors at home would send more money. A lot of them did a great job, of course, but others made incorrect diagnoses because they were moving at speed and didn’t know about the particular challenges of the landscape. BB had a better grasp of the local parasites and diseases, and he was only a patrol medic.
    The God Squad MONGOs were the worst. I’d once come across a gang of Christian hippies with guitars in Africa. They were there to round up patients for what they called their ‘mercy ship’. It turned out to be an old cruise liner that had been converted into a floating hospital to bring ‘hope and healing’ to the poor heathens.
    All well and good, but because the thing was only there for a week, they could only do operations that didn’t need much aftercare. The place was crawling with people dying of gunshot wounds and machete amputations, and all the mercy ship could deal with were cataracts and hare lips, followed by films about Jesus.
    There were already about four groups of happy-clappies in the camp and a hospital ship on its way. The Scientologists were also on the loose. No guitars, but plenty of mind-over-matter techniques and no sense of irony about the volcano logo on their bright yellow T-shirts.
    These twenty-first-century missionaries didn’t seem to realize that their message was going to fall on deaf ears. One press of the Google button would have told them that Islam had taken root here from the Middle East before it grew anywhere else. More than a thousand years ago Banda Aceh was known as the Port of Mecca.
    Our problem was that these jokers moved around the city pretty much at will. Some of them even went out deliberately to get shot at by the army so they could blog home about how heroic they were. They could do what they wanted as far as I was concerned. But eyes and ears in the city were the last things we needed while we did what we were here to do.
    Arnie and the American were still going at it hammer and tongs.
    ‘What is it with these lads? They’d go to war over a brew.’
    Our very own Mongo was following their argument with as much bemusement as I was. He jabbed a finger at the lump in the sleeping-bag. ‘Why don’t you ask Body Beautiful? They’re all a few bricks short of a load. All loners. The only thing that brings them together is this sort of shit.’
    BB sat bolt upright. ‘How many times, for fuck’s sake? I’m just as good as you cunts. What have I done that’s different? I’ll tell you. I didn’t fuck about on a drill square for ten years, that’s all. I passed Selection, all my training’s the same. The only things you can do that I can’t are polish your boots and square a blanket. Big fucking deal.’
    ‘You’re right.’ Mong didn’t bother getting up. ‘And